Occasionally, it’s a great idea to pay top dollar for a hotel room… But it’s almost never a great idea to pay top dollar for a hotel REIT. “Real estate investment trusts are still priced at bubble valuations,” insists Dan Amoss, the analytical mind behind the Strategic Short Report. “These valuations bear little connection to [...]
Back in the height of the bubble, just three short years ago, this plot of land, glass and concrete represented the biggest real estate deal in US history: World’s biggest foreclosure? This morning, we filed it in our bulging “signs of the times” folder… Witness one of the worst housing “flips” of our time: The [...]
The S&P 500 Index jumped more than 1% yesterday – lifting the index to within a whisker of a new one-year high. So let’s have a moment of silence, please, for the millions of S&P Index put options that have died in vain… Thank you. As it turns out, not every sort of put option [...]
The upcoming third-quarter earnings reports from real estate investment trusts will not be pretty. Second-quarter earnings for the sector were boosted by one-time gains from buying back publicly traded bonds at discounts, and taking advantage of bond investors’ newly whimsical attitude toward credit risk by floating new bond issues. Earnings were also boosted as REIT [...]
While you wouldn’t know it from watching the stock market, the commercial real estate scene is still getting worse. The vacancy rate among offices for rent has climbed to 16.5%, a five-year high, says research firm Reis Inc. today. Meanwhile, office rents fell 8.5% in the third quarter, year over year. That’s the steepest fall [...]
